07-23-2021, 01:25 PM
hello.
i have slept on vampire things and i am less significantly tired than when i was when discussing vampire things. i would like to denote a few things in this new state.
1. Vampires are cool. The fact that vampires have received significant development time compared to other races is doubtlessly down to the fact that, hey. it is cool to be a vampire. It is cool that drinking blood has its own system. It is cool that this system requires significant investment to unlock its full benefits and become a vampire in the first place. It is cool that vampires have a separate minigame resource system through which they can increase their IC and mechanical power. I do not mean to disparage the effort put into managing these resources, or mean to Call Vampires Big Lame-Os, when I roll into the next point.
2. Other races and avenues of IC power on the whole are kind of less cool and have received very little development in comparison. This is to an extent understandable; there is no driving push for a Drakanite Blessing mechanic where drakanites can prove they are honorable to their respective dragon god by fighting RPBs and getting rewarded for being the battlechads most Drakanites aspire to be. However, this necessarily means that at least in the racial department, the vast majority of characters are offered a short list of abilities which, for the most part, come across as completely noninteractive and less interesting because, well, they are.
3. Vampire blood upkeep is a population control mechanic, and I feel like if it were not so difficult to make new vampires, then you all would be suffering just as much now, because you would have greater competition. I do not believe the intent was for there to be (hypothetically) a dozen vampires who all have ghouls, plural, who are constantly fighting, who are constantly sucking the population dry. I believe the intent was that vampires would compete for resources, remain relatively few, and expand IC connections in a way which allows them to gather blood more safely with hunting as a supplementary benefit - the few vampires living lives of luxury as their blood supply flourishes.
While I understand each vampire player wants to access and play with the vampire mechanics, they are incredibly powerful IC tools, and there is a reason that access to blood is currently a limited resources. Vampires gorged on the population. They proved themselves a menace. They ghouled, they turned, they expanded, to the point that most of the game had to view them as an imminent, existential threat to the continued existence of Essharan society as they knew it. The blood supply is ultimately finite, and by this point I am sure it is stretched thin and quite violently resistant to being sucked on, but that stems significantly from the choices that vampire characters made in proliferating vampirism and establishing themselves as violent, domineering antagonists whose victories would all too often entail the corruption of family members, friends, enemies, and maid cafe coworkers - not to mention cucking. Truthfully, the Vampiric Scourge did a very good job at being antagonistic. Maybe too good a job - the IC hateboner for vampires is extremely widespread for good reason.
4. No one individual can really help this IC scenario for either themselves or for the sake of the game. It's kind of hard to kill vampires, I'm sure, even as, or especially as, a vampire PC. They tend to be more mechanically powerful than average, to have a number of cronies and lethal allies, and a significant amount of IC connections, some of which might be entirely unknown, adding in even the paranoia that your friends and family might be secret vampire thralls and turn against you in a pivotal moment. Nevertheless...
5. The above factors unfortunately lead everyone to attempt to solve vampirism as a systemic, mechanical issue. Vampire players wish they had more blood, and hate that no one else in the game can really understand what it's like to require it. Non-vampires wish they had such cool things to interact with and understandably view vampirism with envy, leading them to attempt to improve a situation that seems unsolvable by advocating for bringing vampires closer in line with other races, which as correctly pointed out do not have the same maintenance mechanics, but which also completely lack a similar system from which to benefit.
In shorter words -
Vampirism isn't really something easily "fixed" due to IC circumstances which prolong and proliferate the issues inherent with it for vampire and non-vampire PCs. The blood supply only increases if a vampire dies. Vampires die relatively rarely compared to other characters due to their IC positioning and mechanical strength. Vampires would kinda get fucked if they just killed all their vampire friends and then got ganked by the rest of the population. There's a lot there, and...
6. It is almost purely subjective as to whether their current mechanical strength is warranted by these circumstances, and that makes it very difficult to really throw weight or reason behind any suggestion. Those more familiar with the vampire life feel stifled by blood costs without feeling the weight of being "left out" of a very cool set of mechanics. Those who are left out view vampires as immortal, infectious, corrupting, powerful, ICly connected, and unapproachable, except to die fighting or "join the winning team," as a player recently (jokingly) suggested.
Vampires are stronger than any other race in-game. That can be argued, but it's IC fact if not mechanical fact. No other race has anything remotely similar to the IC influence vampires have as a whole, and I don't mean just the Docros. The question at the end of the day is, is that warranted by the effort and actions necessary to upkeep that level of power? If it isn't, how do we fix that but keep everyone happy? If it is, what the hell else is everyone else supposed to do to keep up?
I think Chance's perspective of "vampires are cool, teraphim are cool, buff humans" goes in the right direction. I wish there were more systems like this for everyone to have access to, and I wish that all characters had more mechanical avenues to access when their opponents feel impossible to stand against. There is not a single comparable system in the game other than Essence, and Essence, even, fails to compare as thoroughly laid out by Jumpy on a recent forum post. Everyone wants a piece of that action. Everyone would like more cool things (like Holy's new stun, Occult's new root, and the food buffs, that is definitely a start).
I hereby declare my position:
I want more stuff like vampires. God favor. Faith. Power of friendship. Soul energy. Spiritual attunement to, or against, the lifestream. Contracts. Pacts. Blessings. Sacrifices (of money, of items, of lives, of vit, or years). All kinds of stupid, whacked out crazy shit with drawbacks and benefits. I want suggestions for those. I want to see players who are excited to interact with brand new, interesting systems that provide them methods to increase mechanical power other than going on events, applying for hiddens, grinding Chuggums, and violently murdering their parents for those sweet heirloom uniques. I want to see what kind of interesting, engaging systems we can wrap ourselves in, without getting stuck on the intricacies of exactly how much value 5% lifesteal has in relation to 5% AP. I want to see ideas, inspiration, excitement, and anticipation -
And I hope that seeing these ideas will lead to implementation, to increase the perception of player agency, to meaningfully expand and improve the game, and overall create another layer of mechanical benefits in which players can dip their grubby, greedy little fingers.
i have slept on vampire things and i am less significantly tired than when i was when discussing vampire things. i would like to denote a few things in this new state.
1. Vampires are cool. The fact that vampires have received significant development time compared to other races is doubtlessly down to the fact that, hey. it is cool to be a vampire. It is cool that drinking blood has its own system. It is cool that this system requires significant investment to unlock its full benefits and become a vampire in the first place. It is cool that vampires have a separate minigame resource system through which they can increase their IC and mechanical power. I do not mean to disparage the effort put into managing these resources, or mean to Call Vampires Big Lame-Os, when I roll into the next point.
2. Other races and avenues of IC power on the whole are kind of less cool and have received very little development in comparison. This is to an extent understandable; there is no driving push for a Drakanite Blessing mechanic where drakanites can prove they are honorable to their respective dragon god by fighting RPBs and getting rewarded for being the battlechads most Drakanites aspire to be. However, this necessarily means that at least in the racial department, the vast majority of characters are offered a short list of abilities which, for the most part, come across as completely noninteractive and less interesting because, well, they are.
3. Vampire blood upkeep is a population control mechanic, and I feel like if it were not so difficult to make new vampires, then you all would be suffering just as much now, because you would have greater competition. I do not believe the intent was for there to be (hypothetically) a dozen vampires who all have ghouls, plural, who are constantly fighting, who are constantly sucking the population dry. I believe the intent was that vampires would compete for resources, remain relatively few, and expand IC connections in a way which allows them to gather blood more safely with hunting as a supplementary benefit - the few vampires living lives of luxury as their blood supply flourishes.
While I understand each vampire player wants to access and play with the vampire mechanics, they are incredibly powerful IC tools, and there is a reason that access to blood is currently a limited resources. Vampires gorged on the population. They proved themselves a menace. They ghouled, they turned, they expanded, to the point that most of the game had to view them as an imminent, existential threat to the continued existence of Essharan society as they knew it. The blood supply is ultimately finite, and by this point I am sure it is stretched thin and quite violently resistant to being sucked on, but that stems significantly from the choices that vampire characters made in proliferating vampirism and establishing themselves as violent, domineering antagonists whose victories would all too often entail the corruption of family members, friends, enemies, and maid cafe coworkers - not to mention cucking. Truthfully, the Vampiric Scourge did a very good job at being antagonistic. Maybe too good a job - the IC hateboner for vampires is extremely widespread for good reason.
4. No one individual can really help this IC scenario for either themselves or for the sake of the game. It's kind of hard to kill vampires, I'm sure, even as, or especially as, a vampire PC. They tend to be more mechanically powerful than average, to have a number of cronies and lethal allies, and a significant amount of IC connections, some of which might be entirely unknown, adding in even the paranoia that your friends and family might be secret vampire thralls and turn against you in a pivotal moment. Nevertheless...
5. The above factors unfortunately lead everyone to attempt to solve vampirism as a systemic, mechanical issue. Vampire players wish they had more blood, and hate that no one else in the game can really understand what it's like to require it. Non-vampires wish they had such cool things to interact with and understandably view vampirism with envy, leading them to attempt to improve a situation that seems unsolvable by advocating for bringing vampires closer in line with other races, which as correctly pointed out do not have the same maintenance mechanics, but which also completely lack a similar system from which to benefit.
In shorter words -
Vampirism isn't really something easily "fixed" due to IC circumstances which prolong and proliferate the issues inherent with it for vampire and non-vampire PCs. The blood supply only increases if a vampire dies. Vampires die relatively rarely compared to other characters due to their IC positioning and mechanical strength. Vampires would kinda get fucked if they just killed all their vampire friends and then got ganked by the rest of the population. There's a lot there, and...
6. It is almost purely subjective as to whether their current mechanical strength is warranted by these circumstances, and that makes it very difficult to really throw weight or reason behind any suggestion. Those more familiar with the vampire life feel stifled by blood costs without feeling the weight of being "left out" of a very cool set of mechanics. Those who are left out view vampires as immortal, infectious, corrupting, powerful, ICly connected, and unapproachable, except to die fighting or "join the winning team," as a player recently (jokingly) suggested.
Vampires are stronger than any other race in-game. That can be argued, but it's IC fact if not mechanical fact. No other race has anything remotely similar to the IC influence vampires have as a whole, and I don't mean just the Docros. The question at the end of the day is, is that warranted by the effort and actions necessary to upkeep that level of power? If it isn't, how do we fix that but keep everyone happy? If it is, what the hell else is everyone else supposed to do to keep up?
I think Chance's perspective of "vampires are cool, teraphim are cool, buff humans" goes in the right direction. I wish there were more systems like this for everyone to have access to, and I wish that all characters had more mechanical avenues to access when their opponents feel impossible to stand against. There is not a single comparable system in the game other than Essence, and Essence, even, fails to compare as thoroughly laid out by Jumpy on a recent forum post. Everyone wants a piece of that action. Everyone would like more cool things (like Holy's new stun, Occult's new root, and the food buffs, that is definitely a start).
I hereby declare my position:
I want more stuff like vampires. God favor. Faith. Power of friendship. Soul energy. Spiritual attunement to, or against, the lifestream. Contracts. Pacts. Blessings. Sacrifices (of money, of items, of lives, of vit, or years). All kinds of stupid, whacked out crazy shit with drawbacks and benefits. I want suggestions for those. I want to see players who are excited to interact with brand new, interesting systems that provide them methods to increase mechanical power other than going on events, applying for hiddens, grinding Chuggums, and violently murdering their parents for those sweet heirloom uniques. I want to see what kind of interesting, engaging systems we can wrap ourselves in, without getting stuck on the intricacies of exactly how much value 5% lifesteal has in relation to 5% AP. I want to see ideas, inspiration, excitement, and anticipation -
And I hope that seeing these ideas will lead to implementation, to increase the perception of player agency, to meaningfully expand and improve the game, and overall create another layer of mechanical benefits in which players can dip their grubby, greedy little fingers.
im sorry ill get back to work on cleric/faith
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